Serious bite reportedly caused by S. nobilis in Ireland?

Arachnomaniac19

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Aug 23, 2014
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They said they didn't find the spider until a while after the bite. Almost definitely a wrong ID. If it was correct however, I'd bet it was an allergic reaction.
 

pitbulllady

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They said they didn't find the spider until a while after the bite. Almost definitely a wrong ID. If it was correct however, I'd bet it was an allergic reaction.
OR just a staph infection totally unrelated to any spider, resulting in necrotizing fasciiitis. My brother, who is diabetic, has infections like this quite frequently in his legs, and I had a bout with it myself following an injury in which a stick jabbed some three inches into my leg below the knee during a fall in the woods. The wound wasn't properly treated by medical staff at our sorry excuse of a hospital and infection resulted. My lower leg looked just like this. Ironically not one doctor who saw me suggested a spider as the culprit.

pitbulllady
 

Chris LXXIX

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It's hard to tell sometime. All of those sites are like a - not so funny at least - Barnum circus of those modern, globalized, ignorant world of today, especially when it comes to spiders in general.
"False Widow" and then there's a picture of a spider who looks exactly like a Loxosceles rufescens one.
"The eight legged horror.." and crap like that. Who cares about truth infos when you can "hype" everything, for the average zombie?

However could be. I have no doubts about what their venom can do, especially on a localized, bite site, level.
Here a man lost a finger just last year due to a bite of Loxosceles rufescens, the european brown recluse.

They have a badass, after bite effect. Not always, ok, but it's like Russian Roulette. I think she was bitten by a european recluse. And the mechanical damage from their chelicerae is quite painful as well, not so harmless, tough they are not defensive spiders.
Steatoda sp.? No, i doubt. My money on Loxosceles rufescens, there's a lot more of them in Northern Europe today than last decades.
 
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The Snark

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Too much sensationalism and no scientific data. No time line. How many minutes/hours/days? Oozing pus how long after. Useless speculation W/O such info.

Barring the pus, infection, and compress her entire scenario into 1/2 hour, that roughly describes and looks like my rattlesnake bite. So we swing from minutes with a serious active venom in rapid profusion to a 12 to 18 hour MRSA like scenario without further data.

However, PBL is probably on the mark. The oozing pus and related symptoms are from an angry infection. MRSA, P Multoceda etc. They will not manifest until several hours have passed.

Maybe a little creative journalism combining two different traumas?
 
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Smokehound714

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While nowhere near is potent as latrodectus venom, steatoda actually do have medically significant venom, which is bad news if you have a heart condition or muscular disorders.
 

Tarantula_Hawk

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Nov 24, 2005
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No newspaper article that ever comes out of the British Isles regarding S. nobilis (or spiders as a whole) is worth reading.
I opened the article, saw the picture of Meta menardi (Tetragnathidae) instead of S. nobilis, i closed the article. I was expecting nothing and yet i was still disappointed.
I initially used to get very annoyed by the sensationalistic and completely ignorant nature of such articles, but after years now, i just laugh and move on.
I live in London and have lived in the UK for a while, and unfortunately, between the aggressive and deadly false widow and the giant monsters arriving with banana shipments from S.America they successfully managed to create allarmism in a country where there basically is absolutely nothing even remotely dangerous to humans.
They have actually evacuated schools because S. nobilis. :)
 

Smokehound714

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I actually have had an unpleasant reaction to steatoda grossa venom, I can definitely believe it can seriously injure someone with health problems, but then again nearly anything can haha
 

The Snark

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I actually have had an unpleasant reaction to steatoda grossa venom, I can definitely believe it can seriously injure someone with health problems, but then again nearly anything can haha
Could you explain the venom involved in: ""My leg was completely swollen and it was scabbing over - it was oozing with pus and I couldn't walk. It was awful," she wrote."
 
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